Don't Be That Way - Benny Goodman 1985 

The best music of the USA.

Geweldig🎉🎉

Spot on. I'm 82 on 2nd Sept . Grew up with this and still play drums.

Ah yes. This music dates from an era before tech wizardey manipulated the finished sound. In tose days if a musician couldn't play well enough, he didn't eat.

I saw this program when it was first broadcast, had to pinch myself when I realized "Holy s*, it's 1985 and I'm watching the Benny Goodman band live and in full gallop!" If only we'd been able to hear Shaw, Miller, and the Dorseys under the same circumstances ... Reportedly this program was to test out the band for a new series of concerts. But as you noted, we lost him shortly afterwards.

I could not have said it better myself, the performance and music is a manifestation of "The Greatest Generation".

DITTO

I cannot agree more!!!!

broxmouth truly one of the classiest gentleman ever I love don't be that way

Yes man quality music from one good weather ! I'm 40 years old and I like it a lot !!!

My wife and I have danced all our lives (now 71 y/o). Lucky enough to catch some big bands in the 60s and 70s now they seem to be mostly gone. Now we dance to country western music at least once a week with the same 2-step we love and a little 'jitterbug' thrown in. Still lots of great dancing here in Arizona, especially during the winter when all us 'snowbirds' fill the bars and halls. We are lucky!

Hard to think about right?

he was also the husband of the great Pearl Bailey until her death in 1990

Trade mark of Benny!

I know right

Actually he was 76. Born in 1909, passed away only about a year after this video was made.

The drummer is the late great Louis Bellson. Always wore a smile.

¡Exactamente!

Benny Goodman was 76 during this performance in 1985

This clip so touching on many levels. Not only was this one of Goodman's last performances but look at the crowd. All these gray haired and bald men with their wives of many years dancing and enjoying themselves as if time had never changed. I find that beautiful.

Sorry but you're wrong. Many fine bands since and still going. Check out BBC Big Band, Sid Laurence and lots of great European bands like Thilo Wolf. Many others of course, these only a few examples.

Why do you have to use the F word? Doesn't add anything to your statement.

Foul mouth, what's the point?

Wilson Mcdade That's BG's famous theme song, "Let's Dance". It was actually written as theme and station break music for the "Let's Dance" radio program (Dec. 1934 - April/May 1935), when Benny and his band were completely unknown, and they shared the 3-hour weekly Saturday night radio extravaganza with two other bands. It was that radio series people heard from coast to coast that gave them a taste of what was coming. The series was abruptly cancelled, so to keep the band together it was given a 1 month stand in LA, and they spent a month working their way there doing 1-nighters. But hipper crowds in LA had heard the radio show & the band, and on August 21, 1935, when BG was ready to hang it up from the dismal receptions he and the band got the whole trip west, the crowd at the Palomar Ballroom roared it's approval and the Swing Era was underway. Sure, swing had been around for a couple years pretty much in Chicago and New York and today we'd call it "underground" - as in, not part of the consciousness of the general (white) public YET. But the Palomar gig was stretched from one month to two, and then it was on to another hastily arranged booking in Chicago, for another one month stand at the Congress Hotel beginning in October. They ended up being there for six months, where they really settled into becoming the well-oiled machine called the Benny Goodman Orchestra, playing nightly for dancing and broadcasting many times a week. Virtually every broadcast began with "Let's Dance", and the opening strains of it were soon recognized by millions, everywhere all over the country. By mid 1936 they were back in NYC, utterly dominating the world of popular music, and the rest was, as they say, history.

A very good overview of Benny Goodman and the advent of swing. The terms "white people and white audiences" are problematic, however. Where would jazz be ( and I include bebop) without white audiences? Stanley Crouch mentioned that the young Wynton Marsalis knew next to nothing about jazz when he came out of New Orleans. Sadly, many jazz enthusiasts are stuck with the Ken Burns school of veneration of the black musician to the exclusion of others. The politics of skin.

le monde reste plein de vieux dinosaures : il faut les laisser vivre, à défaut de pouvoir les exhiber dans un musée . Où serait le jazz sans le public blanc ? La question ne pose même pas parce qu'il n'en a pas été ainsi, et lorsque les Bancs s'y sont mis franchement , il ne faut quand même pas oublier que c'est par imitation des orchestres noirs , et puis, ils ont fait semblant d'oublier les origines de cette musique / Ils ont tenté de se l'approprier . C'est pourquoi les musiciens noirs furent interdits dans les orchestres blancs ; ils ont essayé d'éradiquer la paternité de la musique noire comme ils ont éradiqué les Indiens !!! Heureusement , certains Blancs gardèrent les yeux ouverts et c'est Benny Goodman lui-même qui, le premier osa intégrer dans sa petite formation de base des gens comme Teddy Wilson suivi peu de temps après par Lionel Hampton : 2 grands musiciens , qui continuèrent, comme d'habitude, à jouer avec leur mains et pas avec leur peau !!! et sur ce : VIVE BENNY GOODMAN : un très grand musicien, .....et aussi un humaniste .....

@@bblegacy The melody to "Let's Dance" was taken from Carl Maria von Weber's 1819 composition _Aufforderung zum Tanz_ , in English "Invitation to the Dance". Goodman was also a master of classical music so using von Weber as his inspiration came naturally.

It isn't Gene Krupa. This concert is from 1985. Krupa died in 1973. That's Louie Bellson on drums.